I considered apologizing for my absenteeism from this blog but decided it was justified as I've been enormously busy. The film is finished now and I have some time on my hands before I leave in ten days. My list of things to do before I leave is not diminishing as quickly as I'd like. I still have yet to ride the elephants at the zoo, visit Malaysia, go to the bird park or go back to Chinatown now that Chinese New Year decorations are up. Chinatown is scheduled for Wednesday. Alan, the sound guy from the film, promised to take Kaini and I. Although he doesn't know about our plan to buy cheongsams (traditional Chinese dresses). Kaini says she can get away with wearing one if I wear one too. I can already picture the look on Alan's face right before he abandons us in Chinatown.
It's very similar to the look he makes when refrigerators come on in the middle of takes when we're shooting in restaurants or when drunk aunties at hawker centers start yelling loudly to each other. The list of people Kaini asked to be quiet during our shoot boggles my mind. Aside from all the hawker center workers she shushed repeatedly she managed to convince construction workers to stop drilling, forestry workers to come back later to cut down a tree, airport officials to wait an hour to print their tickets. I stand by the fact that movies are magic. Maybe not in the way that people typically perceive, but magic all the same. In what other situation could a girl walk up to a construction foreman and say, "I'm sorry could you please move your 5 storey crane, it's in my way".
This film has been an amazing experience. Exhausting and at times brutal, but I'm getting to a point where I realize that things are almost never worth doing if there isn't some suffering involved. I've definitely learned a lot of valuable things in my time here. Like, I can now say "vegetarian food, no eggs, no milk" in Chinese. Seriously though, an amazing teacher I had once that told me that while I am very creative I could save myself a lot of stress by working on my organizational skills. Turns out she might have been right. It's really too bad I didn't take that advice when she gave it to me at thirteen. It is decidedly something I'm working on now, though. If and when I come back here in a year to work on Michael's next film maybe I won't have to send a production assistant out everyday to pick up things that I forgot. But I honestly think that lack of sleep and lack of an art director were huge factors in my diminished mental clarity. Lesson number two: don't ever production design a feature film without an art director. 
Fortunately our two PA's were amazing ladies and not only ran errands for me, but also helped me hang Christmas decorations, labeled everything I could eat as "vegan safe", and tried to teach me Chinese.I'm convinced that the best possible way to experience a place is to shoot a film there. I like that I can look at the guide books Matt bought and know that I didn't just eat at Newton Hawker Center, I cooked in a stall there. And while I didn't exactly go shopping on Orchard Road, I did install a snow machine outside of a mall.
I spent the night in the airport, I slept in an executive suite on the 59th floor of the Swissotel (only for three hours, but it still counts), I changed the sheets in a sketchy hotel in Chinatown, I wandered into a half finished house looking for power and found construction workers sleeping there, I hung Christmas decorations in yet another hotel, I spent at least 4 hours in the security checkpoint of Robinson's department store. Actually, I might have passed on that last one, given the chance. But I am infinitely grateful to have been given the opportunity to see this place in this way. And to have met the people that I've been working with. I think I'll definitely come back. Hopefully for the local premier in October. I'm signing up for a beginner's conversational Mandarin class at the Chinese Cultural Center when I get back to San Francisco. It would be kind of a waste to learn Chinese and not come back. We'll see. I think for now I'll walk to the kopi tiam down the street and have some tao hui and kopi-o.
